


dance down to nothing

by jk_rockin



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:20:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29038527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jk_rockin/pseuds/jk_rockin
Summary: "Now then, Mister Hickey," he said, in what he hoped was a tolerable imitation of Doctor MacDonald's bedside manner.Hickey’s thin, pale hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist. His skin was very hot. Hickey had been in the sick bay earlier that very day, and Harry had assisted with tending the lacerations on his posterior; then, he had been cool to the touch, but now he felt feverish, clammy. His eyes, too, were the eyes of fever, red-rimmed and piercing. “Hurts,” he said, teeth gritted.
Relationships: Harry D. S. Goodsir/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33
Collections: The Terror Bingo, The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	dance down to nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This is gross! Consent issues regarding sex pollen, Cornelius "Extra Creepy" Hickey, and medical ethics. Sorry, Harry. More specific, spoilery warnings in the end notes.
> 
> Written for The Terror Rarepair Week 2021, using the prompt “Where did you get that?”, and I'm also slapping this up on my Terror Bingo card, for the square 'a horrible mistake'. When does this occur? Shh. Why does this occur? Because I'm awful. Title from _Voodooized_ , by Empires, which is a very Hickey song. As ever, if there's something in here you wish I'd tagged for that I didn't, let me know.

There were advantages to having cultivated a certain amount of goodwill amongst a ship’s crew, and disadvantages in neglecting to do so. Although Harry Goodsir was not technically of the crew of _Terror_ , he liked to think that he, if he had had taken poorly in the mess, would not have been dragged quite so roughly to the sick bay, nor dumped so ignominiously upon the floor as Mister Hickey had been.

“What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?” said Harry, trying not to grimace down at the squirming, red-faced Hickey.

“He… took a funny turn,” said Hartnell, who’d helped drag Hickey in. “He was alright earlier, I think, then he.” Hartnell swallowed. “I didn’t see it myself, but he went sort of wobbly, and then he was on top of one of the lads, and- he’s not well, doctor.”

“Not a doctor,” said Harry patiently, “but as the doctors are away on Erebus this evening, I’ll have to do. Help me get him up on the table, please.”

They lifted the twitching Hickey onto the table, seemingly collectively intent on ignoring the sounds he let out as the men handled him- low, keening, animal sounds, not sounds of pain at all. "Will you be alright with him, doc- sir?" asked Hartnell, eyeing the door.

Harry would very much prefer not to be alone with Hickey, but he could think of no reasonable excuse to keep the men from their dinners; he nodded, watched them leave, and pulled the curtain across behind them before turning back to his patient. "Now then, Mister Hickey," he said, in what he hoped was a tolerable imitation of Doctor MacDonald's bedside manner.

Hickey’s thin, pale hand shot out and wrapped around his wrist. His skin was very hot. Hickey had been in the sick bay earlier that very day, and Harry had assisted with tending the lacerations on his posterior; then, he had been cool to the touch, but now he felt feverish, clammy. His eyes, too, were the eyes of fever, red-rimmed and piercing. “Hurts,” he said, teeth gritted.

Harry pulled his arm free. It took some effort; Hickey’s grip was like iron. “Where is the pain located? Are your… wounds troubling you?”

“Nnhhnn.” Hickey bucked, and reached out. With both hands, he caught hold of Harry’s hand again, and pressed it to his belly, beneath his navel.

Harry was not a doctor, but he could do some of what a doctor would do. “It might be something you ate. Has anything you’ve eaten lately tasted strange?” he asked, palpating Hickey’s stomach, feeling for any physical symptoms. His stomach was not distended; all seemed in order, besides his temperature, and how his body heaved and quivered, and, below their hands, the bulge in Hickey's trousers, which Harry was trying assiduously to ignore. “Can you tell me anything more about the symptoms you’re experiencing?”

Hickey bared his teeth, nothing even close to a grin. “It _hurts_ ," he said again. His body curved towards Harry’s side, and something small and hard pressed against his leg. Frowning, he dipped his fingers into Hickey’s pocket, fishing out a small amber medicine bottle.

It wasn’t a mixture he recognised, and the handwriting was Doctor Peddie’s cramped scrawl, which he always struggled to interpret. He could make out 'coca' and 'cantharides', but not much else, and the liquid was dark and viscous. The label looked new, but the bottle was only half full. "You took this?" he said, squinting at the ingredients. "How much of it?"

On the table, Hickey squirmed. Harry put the back of his hand to his forehead to feel his temperature more accurately. He was blazing hot there, too, but he sighed under the touch, and when Harry tried to take his hand away, he arched up, chasing it. “Don’t,” he said. “S’better when you touch me.”

“That’s… an interesting symptom,” said Harry. He let go again, backing away to the store cupboard to find a basin and the syrup of ipecac. "Well. You'll need to be purged, to get what you took out of you before it does any more damage-"

"I don't need an _emetic_ ," said Hickey, voice low. The hairs on the back of Harry's neck prickled; when he turned, Hickey had swung his legs off the table, and hopped down, stumbling a little. "Don't need anything taken _out_."

“Mister Hickey, I really think-”

“That you do, Mister Goodsir,” slurred Hickey, crowding him up against the bench. His hot, bony hand came to rest on Harry’s hip. “D’you ever do anything else?”

Harry closed his eyes.

He knew very well what he ought to do. He knew what Hickey was, or at least suspected; oh, not that he favoured men, that was commonplace enough, and any objection somewhat hypocritical. The trouble was his character, or lack thereof. His cruelty towards Silna, his insubordination. The sly look in his eyes, like he was listening to you tell him a joke he already knew. Harry ought to be stern with him, purge him, send for the doctors to bleed him. Under no circumstances should he let Hickey touch him.

But Harry was cold. He’d been cold for so long. Silna was gone- not that he would ever have prevailed upon her in that way, of course, even had she not been in so vulnerable a position as theirs, but she had been… a friend, or something like it. Her company had been a balm to him, and now he was alone again, on a ship where he had no friends to speak of. 

"Better touching," Hickey said, pressing his forehead against Harry’s shoulder. He had both hands on Harry now, on his waist, ferreting under his unbuttoned jacket.

It was not friendship. It could never be friendship, but it might be warmth, of a kind.

"Perhaps I had better examine you more closely," Harry said, hearing his own voice as though from very far away.

Hickey would not be coaxed back onto the table. There was only Harry’s cot, tucked away in the prow, which he did not really want Hickey in, and the cot in the sick bay for convalescents who could not manage a hammock, which was unsafe, being more or less in view of the doorway, should anyone else come in. In the end it was Hickey’s urgency which chose for them; he shivered under Harry’s hands, fit to shake himself apart, and dragged Harry down into the convalescent cot.

Despite his better judgement, Harry had already begun to stir when Hickey pawed at the buttons of his trousers, and his fumbling fingers did nothing to assuage it. Odd. Of the many descriptors Harry might have used in reference to the man wriggling underneath him, 'fumbling' was not among them. His own, far steadier fingers fell on Hickey's shirt, pulling the tails free. He had only meant to get to his trouser buttons, but his knuckles rubbed against Hickey’s skin, and found it, like his forehead, hot as a brand. Hickey let out a harsh sound, shuddering.

Curious, Harry spread his hand, palm-down, low on Hickey’s belly, eliciting another such sound. It was pale- what an inane observation, they all were all as pale as the moon from long months of darkness- and red, splotchy, as though a rash was coming on. A reaction to the tincture he’d swallowed? Perhaps something really was wrong with him, and Harry was making it worse.

“N-need,” Hickey said, through clenched teeth. He’d managed to open Harry’s trousers despite his shaking hands, and had one of them in the flap of Harry’s linens, groping for his member. A habitual sodomite, then; even like this, he handled the appendage with a practiced air that made Harry nearly collapse atop him. “Inside, I need-”

“The Articles,” Harry said, startled, “I don’t think-”

“Don’t.” Hickey bit at Harry’s throat. Not a kiss, nothing like a kiss, just a press of sharp teeth to the mastoid tendon, but it made Harry quiver all the same. “Bugger the Articles. _Have_ me.”

He could hardly imagine. Even on land, he’d never had the opportunity to venture beyond manual manipulation. And with _Hickey_. There was very little truth to how most men spoke of men who enjoyed the company of other men, or the supposed effeminacy of those who did- goodness knew Harry had heard just about every word for it there was since joining the expedition- but there was a tension to Hickey, a sharpness, a knife-edge to his smile, that made it very hard to picture him allowing another to… have him, as he put it. “This behaviour is ill-advised,” said Harry, aiming for firm but wobbling abominably. “You’re clearly not well.”

Hickey ground his hips up, spreading his legs, and his fingers tightened around the base of Harry’s prick. “Put this to use, Mister Goodsir,” he snarled, “if you want to keep it.”

Now was the moment to call for help and put a stop to this. Hartnell had said Hickey had been atop another man when he’d taken his ‘funny turn’; nobody would think ill of him. Oh, they might think him weak, but that was hardly new. They’d restrain Hickey, he’d treat him with the syrup and send him off to rest, and he could put the whole incident from his mind-

And the opportunity would never come again. His body had no reservations about Hickey’s overtures, even as his conscience recoiled, and not even Hickey would be so bold as to renew such addresses if Harry cried off now.

It was hard to get Hickey's trousers down, with how he squirmed and rubbed against any part of Harry he could reach, almost pitching them out of the cot when Harry kneeled up to reach for oil. It was more like wrestling than any kind of congress, and that was almost a relief; no chance to misconstrue any of this as tenderness. Finally, finally, Harry got one slick finger up into Hickey, finding him tight but lewdly unresisting, and shockingly hot inside, even in comparison to the heat of his feverish skin.

Harry had never done this before. Had seen it done, in medical demonstrations, but the feeling was quite different. Of course, had he had the opportunity to inspect a man’s fundament in a medical setting, his subject would probably not have arched and whined and twisted back on his finger like this, and he himself would not be twitching in his smallclothes in anticipation- or, Lord, would he? If he was called upon to do this again, would that be tainted by the memory of this?

His middle finger slipped in so easily. He had not had to tell him to bear down to admit the intrusion, but he seemed to vacillate between welcoming him and trying to shove him out. It clearly brought him pleasure- his erection had not flagged, not for a moment- but pleasure not unmingled with resentment. “Stop mucking about,” Hickey gritted out. “Y’know where to put it by now.”

Harry weighed his options, and pulled his fingers out. Without prompting, Hickey turned onto his side, and raised a knee. That was easier. Much easier to look down at the greasy sheen between his taut, scarred buttocks than it had been to look at his face, and Harry was grateful that they would not have to look into one another’s eyes, and that he would not be subject to any unwanted kisses.

How long was it since anyone had kissed him? He could not now recall.

For all his concern over his inexperience, the act itself was very simple, and he did know where to put it. His body did the rest. His body did not care about sin, or about what Hickey was, or what doing this with him made Harry; all it knew was heat, clenching, slippery heat, and it was as easy as breathing to clutch at Hickey’s hips and push his way inside.

Again, that fluttering of muscle. Whatever coherence had remained to Harry abruptly fled, and he buried the high, desperate noise the sensation wrung from him in the crook of Hickey’s neck. The clinical words for what he was doing had not warned him what he would feel, and neither had the derogatory ones. This was buggery, he was _buggering_ Mister Hickey the caulker’s mate, and it felt thoroughly, filthily good. Not sweet, nothing like the affectionate touches of the fellows he had known back home, but good, though good seemed an inadequate word. It was encompassing. Consuming.

Buggering Hickey. If getting him ready had been like wrestling, buggering him was like riding an unbroken horse. Every stroke in and out made Hickey’s whole frame twitch maddeningly, the thin pillow of the cot crammed into his mouth to stop up the short, sharp noises spilling out of him. Impossible to tell by sound alone if they were sounds of pain or of pleasure, or by the movement of his body if he wanted more or wanted it to stop, but he would not suffer Harry so much as slowing down without clawing back at him to get his prick inside again.

No more words now. Just two bodies in ragged rhythm, with the cot creaking beneath them and the sounds of their breath loud as thunder in Harry’s ears.

Hickey was the first to spend. Where he had thrashed under Harry’s thrusts like a frantic animal, when he spent he went rigidly still and silent, his prick spurting, untouched, into the cot’s sheets. It did not take very long, but it felt interminable, as Hickey’s inner muscles clamped down around Harry to the point of pain, keeping him inside.

Harry paused. “Don’t stop,” Hickey said. His voice had changed; not quite the oily charm of his usual demeanour, but more lucid, his consonants clearer. “You're not done.”

Harry had not come. He did not know why, but Hickey’s climax had put his own somewhat further out of reach. The drive to achieve climax was a natural thing- natural, what a choice of word, as though anything about the febrile heat of Hickey’s skin or the grip of his body around Harry was natural, as if the two of them like this was _natural_ \- but something about Hickey’s return to coherency doused Harry’s desire, like washing in cold water.

“Come on, Mister Goodsir,” said Hickey, wheedling, now, which only made it worse. “Not like you to leave a job unfinished, now is it.”

“Perhaps I had better-” said Harry, and he pulled his cock free, slightly faster than was probably polite. He did not know what he intended to say next, but whatever it had been, it was lost, as Hickey heaved the two of them off the cot and onto the floor, knocking the breath from Harry’s lungs as he hit the deck.

His head spun as Hickey crouched over him. Between Hickey’s legs, his prick bobbed, flushed red and still hard, though the emission of his recent orgasm was still smeared upon his thighs, and his hand was still hot, much too hot, grasping at Harry’s own flagging erection.

“Mister Hickey, you have a fever,” said Goodsir, feebly. “You ought not- _oh_ ,” he broke off as that clever, burning hand deftly handled his prick, making him quiver all over.

“There he is,” Hickey crooned. He twisted his hand once, twice, the pressure exquisite, until Harry was fully engorged again, and then, crawling forwards, he raised himself up, planted a hand on Harry’s chest, and sat abruptly down on his cock.

It was no less overwhelming this time. More, if anything, with those sharp eyes looking down at him, and Hickey’s sharply muscled thighs setting the pace, faster and more brutal than Harry would have dared. Now it was him arching under pleasure; now it was Harry’s turn to cram his fist in his mouth to muffle desperate sounds, and Hickey’s to have him, as thoroughly as though he were the one taking and not the one taken. Hickey was beautiful like this. Beautiful like a thunderstorm, like a diving hawk- compelling, lovely, and ruinous.

Above him, Hickey dug his nails into Harry’s chest, and with his other hand he frigged his own prick, rapid and graceless. He came, again, spilling onto Harry’s belly. How was it possible for a man to do that, twice in… well, he wasn’t really sure how long it had been. Surely it could not have been more than ten or twenty minutes? He made sounds this time, low, rough sounds in the back of his throat, and the clutch of his body was like a vise, and that was enough to tip Harry over the edge, too. His climax ripped through him, as though something was being torn out, leaving him gasping and scrabbling at the floor. He wasn’t even sure it felt good. The sensation was too big and strange for that, his vision going hazy at the edges.

When he came to himself, Hickey was still rocking atop him, and his cock, now so red it almost seemed inflamed, was no softer than it had been. The same could not be said for Harry, whose member had begun to soften in the slick confines of Hickey’s passage, and for whom the friction was beginning to be painful.

His tongue was dry and thick in his mouth. “Let me up,” he said.

"You're not done," said Hickey again, all cheer.

Harry very much was done. He could feel his own emission leaking out of Hickey in chilly little rivulets over his testes, and rather than any pleasant post-orgasmic lassitude, creeping over him was an awareness of what a horrible mistake he had made. “Please, I can’t,” said Harry. “I can’t.”

Light glinted off something in Hickey's hand, and that was all the warning Harry had before those hands were on him again, levering his mouth open, and the cold glass of the medicine bottle was forced between his lips. The mixture was bitter, sticky on his tongue; Hickey's grip was bruising on his jaw as he held Harry's mouth closed to prevent him from spitting it out. It stung his throat when he reflexively swallowed, and the heat came over him, almost instantaneous, sweat breaking out all over his body.

Once, some years prior, Harry had suffered rather badly from a tooth gone rotten. He remembered with great acuity the fever it had given him, how the tooth itself had throbbed in his mouth- how such a small thing had overwhelmed every other sense, narrowing his whole world down to a single point of agony. This time it was not in his mouth but low in his belly, right below where Hickey sat, red-faced and triumphant. To Harry’s dull horror, his cock was thickening again inside Hickey, and though it hurt, hurt terribly, he could feel the urge building, more savage than anything in his experience, to rut.

He must not. That was not the urge of a man, but of a beast. He pushed at Hickey, his arms numb and shaking, trying to dislodge him, but all the motion did was rock him down against Harry’s hips, and ratchet the confusing, awful heat within him up another degree.

Hickey rose, squeezing, and fell again, inexorable as the tide. “Like I said, Mister Goodsir,” he said, grinning with all his teeth. “You’re not _done_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery content warnings: Hickey is under the influence of Mysterious Victorian Drugs which affect him like fantasy sex pollen. Goodsir chooses to have sex with him knowing he's affected by something, though he's not sure by what or how much. They have sex to which they both consent, but after Hickey comes the first time, Harry starts to regret his actions, and asks to stop; Hickey, who is now fully lucid, forces Mysterious Victorian Drugs on Goodsir knowing the effect they'll have, and continues having sex with him as the drugs take hold.
> 
> Please come and scream about icy lads with me [on tumblr](https://jkrockin.tumblr.com/) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jk_rockin).


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